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  CHRIS KIMSEY: If I had any plan at all regarding sound, it was simply to get more of a live sound. Before I began working with them, their last few albums like Black and Blue and Goats Head Soup had sounded too clean in places, almost clinical. When I first went to Paris to set up the room at Pathé Marconi, it was intended for rehearsals only. But the room had such a good sound even though the disc was only sixteen-track, they began to feel comfortable. It made for a more relaxed atmosphere which led to a certain spontaneity in the music.

  We’ll talk about the influence of disco in the next chapter but start with the influence of punk rock on Some Girls. While the Stones were clearly a major influence for many punk rock bands, their rock-god status by the late 1970s also made the Stones an object of derision for many in that crowd. But Keith saw the similarities more than the differences.

  Homemade Rolling Stones cartoon by Justin Melkmann originally drawn in 1987

  KEITH RICHARDS: There’s always new bands. I’ve seen them come and go, most of them. And the same probably occurs to the bands who are around now. I don’t know if they’re trying a little too hard to make something new out of something that really isn’t but there again, we didn’t consider what we were doing particularly new when we did it. We were really rehashing old stuff. It’s just that people had missed out on it the first time around. Maybe that’s what it’s all about and what the Sex Pistols and the Clash and the Stranglers, etc., are doing now in England is rehashing what we did for people who missed out on it then. I see a lot of similiarities in terms of images, PR-wise, sound-wise, of what they’re doing to what we did. Some of the press stuff, you could just delete “Rolling Stones” and put in “Sex Pistols.”

  Record store display for Some Girls

  I was in England a year ago for a month or so when the whole hype thing started with punk rock. This was at the time the Sex Pistols appeared on TV and let a few Victorian curses go and everybody was shocked. That’s England, you know. It was real adolescent stuff. But it was no worse than us when we appeared on Juke Box Jury for the first time and everybody thought we were absolute morons. It was same old thing. They sound more like we did fifteen years ago than we could possibly do. I couldn’t re-create that sound now. Some of those records sound like they came out of the same studio as our first album.

  RON WOOD: Those punk songs [on Some Girls] were our message to those boys. We never sat around talking about punk, but you couldn’t avoid it.

  Though the album was recorded in Paris, one of the biggest inspirations for Mick’s lyrics was New York City, where he was living and beginning his two-decade relationship with Texas-born model Jerry Hall.

  MICK JAGGER: Obviously it was all influenced by New York feeling. More obviously I’d say in “Shattered,” when I was writing that I was thinking, “God, I’m really nowhere near there but I’m just reliving it all.” I’d been living there for the two years previously on and off, and it was a big interesting time for the city: the place falling to bits, going broke and Son of Sam and all that. It loomed large as an object in your imagination.

  ANTHONY DECURTIS: There was a sense in which the Stones became a New York band, and that’s reflected on the record. There were New York references throughout Some Girls. In “Just My Imagination” where Jagger sings, “Of all the girls in New York, she loves me true.” That’s not in the Temptations’ version of that song. Of course, “Shattered” and “Miss You”: “Walk in Central Park/Singing after dark/People think I’m crazy.” These references are so specific and so much a part of the texture of New York. They were alert to what was going on in New York. That sense of New York kind of falling apart had all of the social tensions that were developing there. The Stones just sucked that up, man. They just really thrived on it. It’s part of that energy they have . . . Part of a job of an artist is to channel the complicated energy of the times, and that’s what the Rolling Stones do. That’s what they do in Some Girls. That was an album that was a survival statement of a city in crisis. It’s framed by two songs about New York: “Miss You” and “Shattered.”

  Keith suggested a final reason the album was special: the growing rapport between him and the Stones’ new guitarist.

  KEITH RICHARDS: And you gotta remember it was Ronnie’s first full album, first real album with the Stones. Some Girls was kind of like Beggars Banquet. Like we’d been away for a bit, and we came back with a bang.

  THE STONES’ PROCESS

  In this never-before-published interview from 1977, Keith talked with our friend Dave Herman about the beginning of the album that would become Some Girls.

  KEITH RICHARDS: While we were working on the live album, we were together quite a lot and we wrote quite a fair number of songs, considering the amount of time; probably we’ve got another three, four each that we’ve worked on alone; and then there’s other things that Woody and I have had riffs of, which I think we’ve deliberately not worked on too much. A lot of rock ’n’ roll tracks, I’m always scared of overworking them before we get to the studio because a lot of a good rock ’n’ roll tracks depend so much on spontaneity, enthusiasm, and not being too familiar with the thing. I’d rather just have a riff and as long as I know this one, basic, interesting riff to hang something on, I know that we can tot it up in the studio and still get something of that first-take feel about it as well.

  By this time, Keith had earned a reputation as the Stones’ music director.

  KEITH RICHARDS: Let’s put it this way, at the beginning when we’re cutting tracks, you could say I’m the director as far as the actual studio is concerned, which leaves Mick a free hand to be in the control room with the engineer and/or producer if we happen to be using one, so that I don’t have to think too much about what’s going down on tape but I can just concentrate on what we’re all playing, and leave the sound of the actual track up to Mick to a certain extent. So it’s kind of a split thing. I’m only director on one side of the glass. That piece of glass is a brick wall in a way. It’s a very effective block to communication. The fact that you have to communicate just through microphones and headphones, you block a lot of contact with everybody when you’re normally writing songs, eye contact and things like that, that you have when you know somebody well. That’s all cut off.

  So what does a Rolling Stones recording session feel like?

  KEITH RICHARDS: Usually starts with no more than two or three of us. Very rarely will the whole band start off on a track at once. There will always be Charlie, there will always be some rhythm, drums. Maybe one of us on guitar, maybe Ronnie, sometimes Mick plays good rhythm guitar, sometimes me. And then maybe after a bit, Ronnie or Bill might join in on bass or another guitar and then slowly maybe Mick will start to find a top line, without lyrics but maybe just chanting, just sounds, phonetics. It helps a lot to have a lead vocal line to go with, so you know that everybody’s following at least one thing. And also because that is going to be the top line when you eventually do the vocals. Usually we have a bit of shouting going and everybody gets into that. It slowly builds up. Some songs will start off with the weirdest lineups. Like “Happy” started with one guitar, baritone sax, and that was the beginning of that track. Bobby Keys was with us at that time and it just so happened that we were the first ones at the session and we started going and then drums came and slowly we started adding more. Generally, especially with fast tracks, rock ’n’ roll tracks, quite often they’ll start with two, three people at the most, to get into a groove, to get a thing going, and then I guess the criterion is if everybody else starts going and picking up on it and playing it, then you know you’ve got something going. And if they don’t, eventually it just pieces out and you find something else and start again on another riff.

  By the time Some Girls came around, Keith was no longer trying to write singles, and hadn’t been for some time. As he reflected in that same 1977 interview:

  KEITH RICHARDS: Not since 1966. Ever since albums have become bigger than singles, we haven’t because t
he pressure isn’t there to do it. You don’t need singles now. Yeah, it’s nice to have them but it isn’t an absolute necessity. In the early and mid-’60s it was an absolute necessity to have a new number one hit song every three months and because it had to be there, you did it.

  I think it would be a shame if that art was lost completely because one of the things that rock ’n’ roll is suffering from is overindulgence. Musicians are bound to do it if given the situation. The great thing about the single was the limitations that it set. You’ve got to say it all in two minutes thirty seconds, three minutes at the most, and you know when you’ve done it right; and it was a little form in itself which has disappeared now because the necessity of it has disappeared. I think now if people still want singles and still go in to make a single as such, as opposed to just a track and choosing after, “Oh this one would make a good single,” and just editing it down. But if you make a single, if that’s becoming more of a trend then that’s a good thing because limitation is what rock ’n’ roll is all about. It’s a very limited form of music and the great thing about it is how many variations you can get within those very strict confines. Although it’s just a label, like anything else, rock ’n’ roll these days can cover everything from the Sex Pistols to Weather Report. It’s a universal term for popular music now.

  Keith Richards

  CHAPTER 39

  MISS YOU

  ONE OF THE highlights of Some Girls became yet another number one hit single (their eighth!). The beat drew from another musical influence: disco.

  RON WOOD: Mick has a history of checking out what the kids are listening to, whether it was during the disco era or funk, or whatever. He always keeps one eye and one ear on what they’re listening to and how we might be able to apply it to what we do and how we might put our stamp on it.

  MICK JAGGER: We didn’t intentionally set out to make a disco record. To me, it’s just like . . . that bass drum beat and my falsettos just fit nicely around the bass part. Vocally, it’s more gospel, because nowadays disco records are much more repetitive . . . “You know, I wanna dance and shake my booty,” repeated eighty-nine times!

  BILL WYMAN: The idea for those [bass] lines came from Billy Preston, actually. We’d cut a rough demo a year or so earlier after a recording session. I’d already gone home, and Billy picked up my old bass when they started running through that song. He started doing that bit because it seemed to be the style of his left hand. So when we finally came to do the tune, the boys said, “Why don’t you work around Billy’s idea?” So I listened to it once and heard that basic run and took it from there. It took some changing and polishing, but the basic idea was Billy’s.

  CHARLIE WATTS: A lot of those songs like “Miss You” on Some Girls . . . were heavily influenced by going to the discos. You can hear it in a lot of those four-on-the-floor rhythms and the Philadelphia-style drumming. Mick and I used to go to discos a lot . . . It was a great period. I remember being in Munich and coming back from a club with Mick singing one of the Village People songs—‘YMCA,” I think it was—and Keith went mad, but it sounded great on the dance floor.

  The song is also highlighted by the harmonica playing of Sugar Blue, who the Stones first heard when he was busking in Paris.

  SUGAR BLUE: The Paris subway, the Metro, they’re clean, they’re large, they’re well lit. It’s a beautiful space to play. I had met some people from playing around. Quite a lot of people from the “upper crust” that would hang out with the Stones. And I met this cat who said, “Hey man, we really like the way you play. Why don’t you come over and play with the Stones?” And that’s the way it fell out.

  “Miss You,” the eighth and final (for now) Rolling Stones number one single danced its way to the top of the charts on August 5, 1978. While they haven’t had a number one since then, you can never rule out a return to form for this band. As Elvis Presley has proved over and over since his death in 1977, gems from such a vast catalog can still make a run at the charts when reintroduced and promoted properly to a new generation of rock fans. Would you expect anything less from the Rolling Stones?

  CHAPTER 40

  SEND IT TO ME

  LOOK AT THIS picture. Take a good long look at it.

  If it reminds you of the climactic scene in the 1947 Christmas movie classic Miracle on 34th Street, then we are on the same page. The United States Postal Service proves the existence of Santa Claus by delivering canvas bags full of mail to a man named Kris Kringle who is on trial at a courthouse in New York City for claiming to be the real, true, genuine, one and only Saint Nicholas himself!

  Thirty-one years later, the Rolling Stones could have used the same defense in court to prove their continuing status as the Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band in the World!

  Excitement was at fever pitch when the group announced plans to tour the United States to support their very well-received June 1978 release Some Girls. It was the band’s first time on the road here since their spectacular Tour of the Americas in 1975, on which they sold out Madison Square Garden six times (one hundred and fifty thousand–plus fans!). It was going to be a little bit different in 1978 and, dare I say, a lot more special and exclusive in the Big Apple.

  At a time when ticket scalping for top-draw rock concerts had grown to epidemic proportions, a unique strategy was chosen for their one and only New York date at the thirty-three-hundred-seat Palladium Theater on Fourteenth Street between Irving Place and Third Avenue. Tickets were made available only by lottery through the most credible, influential FM progressive rock radio station in the country—WNEW-FM. Take a peek at those mailbags engulfing program director Scott Muni in his office. Over four hundred thousand postcards were received in three days for those thirty-three hundred seats!

  Winners were selected at random and notified by telephone where to purchase their prized tickets. The ducats themselves were undated and details about the show were not revealed until the day before the actual concert.

  The conclusions you could draw from all of this? Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus!

  STONES CONTROVERSIES IN THE 70S

  ANTHONY DECURTIS: I think the whole thing with the Stones and women—I find their depiction of the relationships between men and women realistic. It’s not sentimental. That doesn’t mean that they don’t like women. It’s about the kind of power plays that come into play in a relationship. It’s not prudified. But it’s not negative. It’s just honest. It’s not the usual view of love you get in pop music. It allows for the darker elements . . .

  It seems like with every Stones album, there was another controversy. The feminist group WAVAW (Women Against Violence Against Women) was outraged over the promotional poster for Black and Blue (right). Keith and Mick’s attitude was: “It’s a joke, get over it.”

  For Some Girls, the main flap had to do with a throwaway lyric about black girls and what, to his mind, they wanted to do all night. Jesse Jackson got involved, protesting the song.

  MICK JAGGER: I think [the races] are all well covered—everyone’s represented (laughs). Most of the girls I’ve played the song to LIKE “Some Girls.” They think it’s funny; black girlfriends of mine just laughed. And I think it’s very complimentary about Chinese girls, I think they come off better than English girls. I really like girls an awful lot, and I don’t think I’d say anything really nasty about any of them . . . (laughs). The song’s supposed to be funny.

  As for his take on Jesse Jackson, here’s a quote from 1985:

  MICK JAGGER: I haven’t seen him since. That’s an example of an ad-lib getting you into a lot of trouble. No Italians complained. There’s a line about French girls. I don’t know if anyone was really upset apart from him.

  On Saturday Night Live, Garrett Morris gave a mock editorial where after acting offended, he quoted the line and said, “I have one thing to say to you, Mr. Mick Jagger . . . Where are these women?!?”

  Controversial promo poster for Black and Blue featuring Anita Russell

&nbs
p; CHAPTER 41

  HANG FIRE

  NINETEEN EIGHTY-ONE was an interesting year for the Stones on a number of fronts: a new album; a new tour; a new technology; and a new single destined to take its place among the greatest and most memorable Stones songs of all time.

  Let’s tackle that last one first. “Start Me Up” was just another one of those instant Stones classics solidifying Keith Richards’s nickname: “The Human Riff.”

  BILLY ALTMAN: On “Start Me Up,” I think the Chuck Berry riffs that Keith had teethed on as a kid, they have just become a part of his DNA as well. It’s all just a Chuck Berry riff turned a little bit sideways but now they don’t sound like Keith doing a Chuck Berry riff, they just sound like Keith Richards. At that point, it had become his own.

  Charlie Watts’s work stands out as well.

  BILLY ALTMAN: Charlie is just tremendous on “Start Me Up.” He uses space so well, which is something you don’t think of a rock drummer using much. They’re always trying to fill space. But Charlie is one of these drummers who understands the room between on his drum kit, especially on the later albums. I think it goes back to his being a jazz drummer. If you listen to the end when the song slows down and then starts to wind back up again, he becomes almost the center of the song as they use him to build everything up throughout the choruses.